Recently I was on a talk radio show with a few other guests and one mom jumped in with, “just to be clear. I am not a Mommy Blogger.” Disdain dripped from each syllable. A little too perkily I jumped in the fray, “I am a Mommy Blogger.” and the otherwise uneventful hour continued.
It was only later in the evening that I realized my fellow blogger was trying to distance herself from me. She didn’t want to be known as just a Mommy Blogger. She wants to be more than just a Mom. She wanted to be taken seriously; she wanted to play with The Big Boys. In my quiet reflective mood I felt sorry for her, and I still do.
Mommy Blogging is more than gardening and fairytales, it runs deeper than meal planning, potty training and fitness plans. Mommy Blogging is post feminist, post Mommy Wars, post partum and post playgroup. Mommy Blogging is all of us, Mommy Blogging can even be for boys. Big Boys too.
If you’re Heather Armstrong you announce your pregnancy on your blog, and then go on to describe the intensity of food flavors in your first trimester.
What if you’re not Dooce? What if you’re pregnant and terrified, where do you go then? What if you have cancer and kids? When do you stop being a mother, and just be a blogger?
When can you be a woman and not just a mother?
Never.
Every month or so my husband and I will go do something very adult, dinner and a movie, cocktails and a party, mixed doubles tennis; it could be anything, but it’s exclusively adult. Every month or so we return home, each of us silently wishing that the kids are a little bit awake so we can whisper to them about our evening.
I can’t turn myself into a childless woman for
an evening out any more than I can ditch motherhood to churn out some prose.
I read about other women fighting for their children’s lives and I think, “Oh my, me too.” Not because I’m fighting to keep Jane and Alexander alive, but because I have. I remember holding my son in the NICU while doctors and nurses gave me looks that were meant to portray compassion, but instead appeared pitiful. I can’t rewind and not be their Mom. My lens has forever changed.
I can’t sit and watch any longer. I don’t have the luxury of armchair punditry, I’m their Mother, and parenting requires action. Never again can I look at a child and see them as a kid. They are always Someone’s Baby.
You’ll have to be patient and understand that I am not just a mother, and it’s not just a mommy blog.
I am a mother.
This is a Mommy Blog.